Summary
This chapter illustrates that at the start of the 1930s the need to house the lower-paid workers still existed, either by providing homes to rent or to buy. In many ways the need was more urgent as the housing stock became older and the effects of the slum clearance schemes, the only area where government funding was available in the field of housing, took effect. The new industries were mainly attracted to the London suburbs where there was an acute shortage of housing, the workers commuted to their jobs until new houses were built nearby.
Financial constraints made the large scale government funding of new houses impossible but the cheap money policies, which were designed to stimulate manufacturing industries, made it attractive for the large number of small builders in the London area to borrow money from banks. The banks argument for lending to builders was that few other opportunities for lending were available. The builder/developers responded quickly to the realisation that banks would lend them capital to expand and that the building societies were eager lenders to prospective home owners of the houses which they built. The established views on what houses to build and how was largely ignored and the speculative builder constructed what he thought would sell and at a price the lower paid could afford.
The local authorities exercised few controls and central government allowed the expansion of borrowing by the builders and the purchasers to go unchecked. As a result a substantial number of houses were built by a very large number of builders, close to the new factories in the London suburbs.
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